I am back in London for the new Parliamentary term, and awaiting the announcement this lunchtime of the name of the new Prime Minister. A good moment to reflect on a hot Wiltshire summer, with dark clouds gathering.
The recess began with the annual Wilsford Lawn Service, hosted by Joanna Fraser at her house, continuing the curious local tradition of holding church in a garden each year, and presided over the Bishop of Ramsbury. The lawn was green; but that was still July. Over August the Marlborough Downs and Salisbury Plain browned like a creme brulee. I played cricket on hard-baked fields, and walked across the savannah of Pewsey Vale half-expecting a herd of antelope to appear over Alton Barnes.
The drought came at the end of a good harvest, but it reflects the total unpredictability of the weather which is the greatest factor in the farming economy. Government support is one way of offsetting this factor and I was glad that Defra sent farmers half their payments six months early this year.
Long dry grass is not the best terrain to fire incendiary munitions into, as the Army found this summer. If you live along the north of the Plain you will have seen the fires - covering 630 hectares at one point, the largest fire in the area for 30 years. As I wrote here, I have been in touch with the Fire Brigade, the MOD and the Army about what happened, and will be taking the matter up again with Defence Ministers now Parliament is back.
While there may need to be modifications to the live firing protocols, I recognise the need for proper training on the Plain. After all, it wasn’t just the British Army learning about artillery: we are training Ukrainian troops too, who go from Wiltshire to the front line against the Russians. The more avoidable risk factor is the length of the grass, which is left to grow high because of - to my mind - overly cautious restrictions on grazing in the Impact Areas. I’ll be raising this too.
Down in the valleys the streams are dry, and the rivers remain unacceptably polluted. It’s not all bad news, however, because this month the Government introduced new measures to compel the water companies to reduce and mitigate the use of storm overflows that discharge sewage into the rivers. I have campaigned on this intensely and will continue to do so, but I also hope constituents appreciate the problem is not one that can be resolved with a simple line of legislation banning these discharges. The effect of that (as I wrote here) would be waste backing up into people’s homes, which I don’t think is what the campaigners are calling for. We need major investments in sewage works (now required by Government), more nature-based solutions to improve drainage and water health without concrete infrastructure, and better planning and housebuilding. It will take time, but this Government is doing more than any previous one, despite the social media warriors accusing us of wilfully and happily poisoning the streams.
Once the MPs’ round of voting ended I kept quiet on the Conservative leadership race. (The only competition I took an active role in this August was the Waggiest Tail contest at the All Cannings Dog Show, at which Pebble the Jack Russell let us down by standing stock-still, his tail motionless as a pointer’s, while the judge passed by.) But I was very pleased to welcome both Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss to Devizes where they each faced large audiences of Conservative members. Liz said we gave her the toughest set of questions she’d faced so far. Both did very well in my view, with generally positive feedback from members afterwards.
I won’t comment at length on the challenges the new PM faces, which are all very obvious and well discussed in the media. But I am acutely conscious of the scale of the challenge households face, looking at the energy bills coming down the road towards them this autumn. I have been discussing with colleagues and ministers what I take to be the most obvious source of the problem, the way that energy producers are allowed to set prices based on the most expensive source of energy, no matter their own actual costs. This means that electricity generated from renewable sources is priced according to the cost of gas, even though the wind is blowing and sun shining as much as usual (in fact more than usual, this summer). I was quoted in the Telegraph making this point and hope we will see some action very soon, in addition to the very necessary announcement of support for households facing extreme difficulties in their personal finances.
I have also written recently in The Times and The Telegraph about the imperative of new policies to support communities and families. We need more than direct financial support from the taxpayer to people in trouble, whether through tax cuts or benefits. Government cannot afford, and will never have the necessary sensitivity and flexibility anyway, to support the millions of people who face hardship, whether in their finances, their health or mental health, or (most difficult and consequential of all) their relationships. But families and communities can provide this support, informally and early enough to prevent catastrophe for the individual and a huge bill for the taxpayer. We need a ‘social resilience strategy’ as well as a plan for better energy security.
Big picture politics aside, August had its share of important local issues, including the long-running battle to improve road safety on the A338/A346, the old sheep track the wends its way from Tidworth, through the Collingbournes, Burbage, Marlborough and the Ogbournes and is now a primary route for massive HGVs. I hosted a packed public meeting in Collingbourne Kingston in late July and then, as promised, visited again with the Wiltshire Council Cabinet Member for Transport last week, to walk through the most lethal blackspots, and will come again in a month or so to update residents on the progress that the police and council are making to reduce the danger on this road. More here and here.
I’ve also been closely involved in the battle against anti-social behaviour in Devizes, most notably at the Station Road car park which hosts regular ‘meets’ of boy racers in their vehicles, one of which recently hospitalised a resident who attempted to remonstrate with its driver. The Town Council, police and Wiltshire Council have acted quickly to introduce temporary measures to stop the problem and I will meet residents this month to discuss a long-term solution. More here.
I had a strange experience last week. I bought three books at the (highly recommended) White Horse bookshop in Marlborough: JG Farrell’s The Siege of Krishnapur, Robert Harris’s Lustrum (about ancient Rome), and Jessie Child’s The Siege of Loyalty House (about the battle for Basing House in the English Civil War). When I got home I found the latter two books both used as their inscription on the first page a quote from the first one. Farrell wrote, ‘We look on past ages with condescension, as a mere preparation for us… but what if we are a mere after-glow of them?’ So the phrase was in my mind as we explored the largest henge in Britain, ten times bigger than Stonehenge, innocuously straddling the road through Marden in the Pewsey Vale. It’s not obvious now, and really only apparent from the air, but here was something ginormous, and worth a wander round. In Wiltshire we are the after-glow of a civilisation as great, in its way, as ours.
